Gabo had moved to England from France in 1935. The following year, he met and married the painter Miriam Franklin (née Israels, 1907-1993). During his time in England, Gabo mixed in modernist circles with the critic Herbert Read, abstract artists including Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, and the architect Leslie Martin, as well as with fellow émigrés. He edited the Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art (1937) with Leslie Martin and Ben Nicholson, discovered the new transparent material of perspex, which he explored in his sculpture, and exhibited and sold many sculptures. In 1938 he visited the USA, where he also exhibited, but returned to England and spent the war years in Cornwall, where his daughter, Nina, was born. After seven years in England, the family left to settle permanently in the USA in 1946.